


Friend, Ally, Foe

by mypedia



Series: penny for your thoughts [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: Civil War, Friendship, Other, spoilers for the film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 12:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4667010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mypedia/pseuds/mypedia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Based on the snippet of dialogue in the Cap 3 trailer. Spoilers for the film. </i>
</p><p>If only everything were easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend, Ally, Foe

Around Clint and Natasha, the angry whir of the Ironman suit is punctuated with grunts of pain, yelling and swearing, the clang of metal as shield meets armor, and the occasional crash as someone is thrown into a building. The air reeks of sweat and gunpowder.

“Are we still friends?” Natasha asks, as he pins her- giving him the advantage for what they both know will only be a split-second at the most. She’s smirking, her knee threateningly close to his stomach, eyes alight.

Clint’s mouth curves into a half-grin as he bends his elbows to lower himself closer to the ground, and to her; it only makes him more vulnerable, but she doesn’t move. “Depends how hard you hit me,” he says, light and teasing.

Natasha watches him, smiling almost lazily from where she’s lying between his forearms. “That depends.”

Okay, he’ll bite. “On what?”

“How much force is needed to knock some sense into you.” Her posture is mirth but her eyes are fire.

“Um,” Clint purses his lips, emboldened by the fact that she’s motionless, “Don’t think you can hit quite that hard.”

“Mm, no, you’re right.” She gives her trademark half-smirk, pushing at his chest a little with her palms. “Your head is too thick.” The little push turns into a shove, and the shove turns into a punch, which he parries with a deft blow of his own, before throwing his leg over Natasha’s to keep her down.

She’s still putting absolutely no effort into this.

“Is my thick head too much of a challenge?” Clint asks, purposefully being annoying. If he didn’t know to search for it, he wouldn’t have noticed the hard set of her shoulders, or the way her gaze is a little too sharp.

Natasha smiles. “I can probably work around it.”

“Yeah?” As much as she’s wrapping it up in banter, he knows this is important to her; hell, the damn arrow necklace is still around her throat. “By hitting me hard?” He’s giving her an out that he knows she won’t take; as he says it, he reaches out and curls his fingers around Natasha’s thin gold chain, sliding down the links until he brushes against the cool pendant.

Natasha meets his gaze. “By hitting you extra hard.”

Clint drops the pendant and throws his head back as he laughs. “Then I guess,” he replies, propping himself on one knee and leaning in more so they’re almost nose to nose, “we’ll still be friends.” He’s barely finished speaking when Natasha’s shoulders relax imperceptibly, a movement so tiny that if he hadn’t been looking for it, he wouldn’t have seen.

Then, suddenly, her knee jerks up and plants into his gut; he rolls over instinctively to absorb the impact, and she’s on top of him not a second later. Clint takes the punch to his shoulder- that’ll bruise, he thinks- but manages to dodge the next, a particularly nasty one aimed at his neck. He catches her knuckles and uses the momentum to flip himself over. Natasha scrambles out of the way and now they’re both standing, breathing hard, facing each other.

“Friends, huh?” Clint asks, not missing the fleeting regret that ghosts across her face. He hadn’t meant it like that, but this isn’t the time for long talks, or for slowly easing things out of her. He hastens to add, “So, movie marathon tonight?”

Natasha ducks as the shield whizzes past them, barely missing her shoulder. Cap’s shouted “Incoming!” is just a little too late. “I’m a little busy these days,” she replies, darting into Clint’s space as they hear Sam swear loudly. “Can’t really commit to several hours.”

Clint anticipates her strike and dodges it, then kicks her as she’s righting her balance, causing her to stumble. It allows him to land a good two hits before Natasha finds her feet and twists out of the way, grabbing his forearm and bending it backwards until he’s forced to flip himself to avoid a break. He wrenches out of her grip, panting, waves of pain radiating down his arm.

“No movie marathon?” he gasps out, grinning. He was only joking, anyways; neither of them has the time these days for one film, let alone several. Still, he continues pestering her, because the ‘normal friends’ schtick is so surreal it’s laughable. “What about coffee? Thirty minutes, tops.”

Natasha looks to the side, and he follows her gaze to see Rhodey on his knees in front of Wanda, red tendrils creeping around his forehead. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Clint asks, not ducking in time and catching a moderate hit to his shoulder. 

Natasha winces at the return strike, his knuckles slamming against her head. “You know why.”

The thing is, he does. And even though he’d only been joking, never seriously expecting her to agree to a meet-up, he can’t help his acerbic tone. “What’s the matter? The half-grown, walking container of daddy issues ain’t giving you enough down time?”

Natasha bends low, about to jump onto his shoulders or back, but he’s seen her do it enough times that he’s prepared for it and catches her hair. Less than two seconds pass before, knowing how much she hates it, he lets go, shoving her away from him with a punch so half-hearted, he may as well not have bothered. She barely stumbles backwards.

“I have time,” Natasha says, a careful edge to her voice as she swings her leg out, just grazing his ankle. “I… suppose we could meet.”

“So, lunch?” Clint demands, his fists raised chest-high. 

She hesitates.

A small part of Clint knows where this is going, but damn him because he can’t stop. He’s never been one to avoid confrontation. “C’mon, Nat, I haven’t seen you in two months.”

“Whose fault is that?” she bites out, before remembering herself She dodges his next strike easily, and then he feels rather than hears her sigh. “Lunch tomorrow?”

Clint closes his eyes, and Natasha doesn’t take the opportunity to deck him. “I can’t. I have a… meeting.” No, he doesn’t, he has a raid on one of Tony’s suppliers, but he can’t tell her that.

“Right, of course.” She sees straight through him.

“Dinner tomorrow?” he throws out, punctuating each syllable with an attempted punch, neither of which he lands. She’s just… stepping out of the way, at this point. He’d barely even tried to aim, let alone put any force behind the hits.

Natasha rocks on the balls of her feet, the only sign of her agitation coming in the form of a sharp kick to his abdomen; not expecting it, he rocks backwards and just about manages to avoid stumbling. It was a hard kick, but not as much as she’s capable.

“You can’t do dinner,” he surmises. “Lunch the day after, then?”

She looks away. “Dinner the day after?”

He can’t. It’s an actual team meeting this time, and they’re going over the plans for an attack for the day after, which means he can’t miss it even if he wanted to.

When he answers her with a weak punch to her shoulder, Natasha returns with an even weaker blow to his upper arm. “We could always meet at night.”

Clint wants to say yes- God, he desperately wants to say yes, but… “Cap has us up at five every morning, and we rotate look-out shifts all night until then.” He could convince Maximoff, Cap, or Sam to take over his shift, but they’d know what it was for, and all three were taking Natasha’s loyalty extremely personally.

She’s staring at him, and he’s staring at her, and they’ve both entirely given up the pretense of a fight.

“Lunch anytime,” Clint says, not caring how he sounds. Steve hasn’t made minor plans further than four days away. “Any day after Monday.”

Natasha rubs her wrists, and he knows what she’s going to say before she even opens her mouth. “I’m… out of town.”

“From when?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“Until?”

“Tuesday, the week after.”

So nine days, give or take. And the worst thing is, this is all going back to the commanders. Tony will know they plan to attack somewhere tomorrow at lunch. Steve will know that Tony’s out of town starting from Sunday. They’re both well aware of the information they’re giving out, which is making this all the more painful.

“We can talk after that,” Natasha offers, but she doesn’t even sound like she believes it herself.

“I can’t,” Clint says, hoarsely. “We’re leaving the Saturday before you get back. For two weeks.”

Natasha snorts. “Just our luck.” Several feet away, Rhodey lets out a pained cry as Bucky slams into him. She looks from him, to Clint, and back. “I have to- ”

“Go,” he says. “It’s fine.”

Before she sprints past him, he grabs her wrist. “Nat, anything happens, you call me.” Her life and any danger she’s in comes before team loyalty- even if it’s his team putting her in danger. “I don’t care what I’m in the middle of.”

Natasha’s eyes scan his face quickly, and he knows she’s taking in everything he wants to say, but can’t. “And the same to you,” she says curtly, mask slipping back on before she leaps into the fray of fighting bodies.

They’re friends, still, Clint thinks, watching her send pulses of electricity through Bucky’s metal arm.

And yet they’re not.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message me [on Tumblr](http://www.captain-croptop.tumblr.com) if you have a prompt or request.
> 
> Leave a comment if you liked it :)


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